Male vs Female Authors

[SirRaustusBear]

I read a post in another thread that said Harper Lee, in writing To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote like a man. This raised the question how does a man write and how is this different from a woman's writing?

Obviously no specific guidelines would hold up because every author is different but if I had to pick a stereotype for each sex I would say that the archetypal male author would be someone like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy, using simpler diction and sentence structure and composing novels containing violence and adventure, ultimately delivering some grand statement about life.

A representative female author would have to be someone like Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen, who writes about everyday societal and emotional trials, with much of the plot hinging on dialogue and characters' thoughts, ending in some greater understanding of human relationships.

I don't think these ideas are true, and I can probably think of more men who write in the second style than women (Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Honore de Balzac, etc.)

So basically does anyone subscribe to ideas such as these, and do you think that they derive from real patterns in literature or are they the result of latent sexist expectations? If it is the former is that because of societal pressures that have restricted women, up until recently, from experiencing life outside of the home or a close society, or do you think it is some predisposition on their part to confront those themes.

Personally I think people write about what they know, and societal mores have in the past kept women from having Hemingwayesque adventures, so many of female writings were concerned with the subjects I have listed. I don't see this as female literature, however, and I don't see women who write of adventure as writing like men.

Anyways, discuss

[NickAdams]

Faulkner's statements were about human relationships.

Joyce's work falls into the second catergory.

[curlyqlink]

I think women authors concentrate somewhat more on interpersonal relationships. It's the interactions that define the main character(s). With male authors, character is more hermetically sealed, more of an independent entity. I think that's particularly noticeable in Balzac's Madame Bovary. There's something self-sustaining about Emma Bovary; she isn't defined by the characters around her. Or by circumstances, either. It's almost as if she's cut off, isolated.

It's very different in, say, a Jane Austen novel. Austen's heroines seem very much molded by their sisters, parents, and prospective husbands. It's not that they're weak... they're anything but weak. They're flexible. Aware, tuned in. And of course they always end up better off than did Madame Bovary...

[JBI]

Why not just compare good to bad authors? this argument is futile since there is an exception to everything.

[SirRaustusBear]

I didn't mean to suggest that people should think of authors this way, and as I said I don't believe stereotypes are effective categorizations for authors. I was just wondering if some or the majority of readers felt this way.

[Joreads]

I had an interesting comment made to me on the weekend about Alexandar McCall Smith, he writes the No1 ladies Detective agency amoung other things. The comment was that it didn't ring true a man writing about a woman. I guess the questions is if there was no author on the front of the book would we still feel the same?

It has never bothered me what the sex of the author is it is the quality of the writing that counts.

[mortalterror]

Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa reads just like a Hemingway novel, Green Hills of Africa specifically. She used to go big game hunting, and have adventures, but of course, she was a member of the aristocracy.

[moose gurl]

Perhaps because I consider myself a female writer as well, I must admit I am typically disappointed when it comes to female authors. I didn't enjoy Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, or Lousia May Alcott. I have been timid of Virginia Woolf, because I'm afraid she'll disappoint me too.

But I'm not saying all females write differently from men. It's the subject matter of those women that turns me off more than their writing ability. I'm sure Austen can write like the best of them, but the lovey-dovey mushy stuff just isn't for me. I have the same problem with the Bronte sisters. The subject there is just--well, I would say "girly," but I don't really find that appropriate. It's just not for me.

On the other hand, I love Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar." I was initially tentative, since her poetry falls along the lines of emotional whimpering, but The Bell Jar was absolutely fantastic. I also really enjoyed Morrison, one of my favorite authors AND a female. I've heard Atwood is good and a tad Orwellian, which is bonus points in my book. So it's not so much female styled writing, but the subject matter SOME (most definitely not all) female authors choose.

Whether or not this is their own fault is, well, debatable. It depends, of course, on the era they wrote in. I don't blame Austen and Alcott and Bronte for being constricted to the limits that were placed on females...but I'm not going to go out and read their books because of it. It's a personal choice, and it's just not up my alley. I'd rather read a book dealing with violence, race, insanity...but I'm just not interested in love and family stories.

[ballb]

To try to tackle SRB`s first point.

If you were given a piece of text to read, could you tell if the writer was male or female? I`d have to answer... Sometimes.

Certainly the above mentioned authors such as Austen or the Brontes leap off the page at you as feminine in style.

But what about George Eliot? The style as well as the nom de plume would pull the wool over the readers eyes.

Could Frankenstein have been written by a man? I think so.

Could the Palliser novels have been written by a woman? Maybe.

Perhaps style more than content is a clue to gender. But I`m not really sure. Interesting thread though.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

But I'm not saying all females write differently from men. It's the subject matter of those women that turns me off more than their writing ability. I'm sure Austen can write like the best of them, but the lovey-dovey mushy stuff just isn't for me. I have the same problem with the Bronte sisters. The subject there is just--well, I would say "girly," but I don't really find that appropriate. It's just not for me.

Not too sure about this, the description of Austen's novels as being 'lovey dovey', yes they deal with love, but that does not mean they are all about love.-I know it may sound funny, but I feel that a novelist who Jane has a lot in common with is Marcel Proust. Yes, they have their differences; due to the fact that he was less culturally inhibited Proust was able to discuss sex a lot more, as well as homosexuality. But an essential theme which runs in their novels is the cruelty of the aristocracy and middle-classes-a cruelty which Holden Caulfield would call 'phoniness', pretentiousness and fakeness, an insidious cruelty because is hard to observe and spot. Note, for example, Emma's reaction to the news that her friend wants to marry a farmer who she loves, and her failed attempt to 'match her up' with Mr. Elton-note also the unhappy marriages, despotic mothers and idiotic fathers and stupid recalcitrant sisters and men who populate Austen's novel. Proust also discusses and comments on the insidious cruelty of the aristocracy, their insouciance, the obsequious nature of the parties which he attends in a similar fashion.

I don't really know how the novels of the Bronte's could be construed as being 'lovey-dovey' (at least the ones I have read)-I mean Cathy and Heathcliffe and complete and utter nutcases! :D


It's a personal choice, and it's just not up my alley. I'd rather read a book dealing with violence, race, insanity...but I'm just not interested in love and family stories.

Thing is that all families are somewhat insane-you know opening line of Anna Karenina-'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'-literature and Austen in particular rarely deals with 'happy families' (they don't really exist, that is why they are all like)-just because the cruelty is less obvious doesn't mean it is any less interesting! Reading is kind of like a treasure hunt, and you may find your own personal gems when you least expect it. Besides a lot of these 'violent, insane' characters are completely banal and one-dimensional.

I think that the 'main' difference is that women often have a kind of sensitivity, as well as certain subtle sense of humor (Gibbons, Mitford, Austen) which men often lack, and this is coming from a man!

[Erichtho]

ISo basically does anyone subscribe to ideas such as these, and do you think that they derive from real patterns in literature or are they the result of latent sexist expectations? If it is the former is that because of societal pressures that have restricted women, up until recently, from experiencing life outside of the home or a close society, or do you think it is some predisposition on their part to confront those themes.

I cannot see a specifically male or female writing style, as in that I would see the gender of an author just from the writing, but there certainly are expectations (not only of sexist nature), otherwise male authors wouldn't publish their romance works often under female pseudonyms, or the opposite in science fiction for example. And don't you know about Donna Leon, that American writer living in Italy, whose novels all play where she lives and are published in the whole world under her real name, just in Italy she uses a supposedly American pseudonym, because Italian readers might be more attracted to foreign literature than their own?

[kelby_lake]

My post you referring to, I believe :)
I didn't mean to sound like a female-hating person, but if you look at psychology...
i had to do this excercise where there were 'lonely hearts' adverts from a paper and you had to work out whether a man or a woman had written it (obviously the 'he's' and 'she's' were crossed out, etc). You could tell who had written it by their style.

A lot of men write in a romantic style, but there is still something in there which makes it sound masculine.

Experiment: I suggest, if we can, to put up a short extract from a novel/play/short story, typical of the rest of the book, and see if we can guess the gender of the writer. If the characters are famous I suggest their names be dashed out.
What do you think? :) :)

[NickAdams]

I had an interesting comment made to me on the weekend about Alexandar McCall Smith, he writes the No1 ladies Detective agency amoung other things. The comment was that it didn't ring true a man writing about a woman. I guess the questions is if there was no author on the front of the book would we still feel the same?

It has never bothered me what the sex of the author is it is the quality of the writing that counts.

I wonder if they would make the same comment about Tolstoy.

[Morten]

Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa reads just like a Hemingway novel, Green Hills of Africa specifically. She used to go big game hunting, and have adventures, but of course, she was a member of the aristocracy.

Obviously you have not read Out of Africa. It does not read like Hemingway at all.

[Morten]

Perhaps because I consider myself a female writer as well, I must admit I am typically disappointed when it comes to female authors. I didn't enjoy Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, or Lousia May Alcott. I have been timid of Virginia Woolf, because I'm afraid she'll disappoint me too.

But I'm not saying all females write differently from men. It's the subject matter of those women that turns me off more than their writing ability. I'm sure Austen can write like the best of them, but the lovey-dovey mushy stuff just isn't for me. I have the same problem with the Bronte sisters. The subject there is just--well, I would say "girly," but I don't really find that appropriate. It's just not for me.

On the other hand, I love Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar." I was initially tentative, since her poetry falls along the lines of emotional whimpering, but The Bell Jar was absolutely fantastic. I also really enjoyed Morrison, one of my favorite authors AND a female. I've heard Atwood is good and a tad Orwellian, which is bonus points in my book. So it's not so much female styled writing, but the subject matter SOME (most definitely not all) female authors choose.

Whether or not this is their own fault is, well, debatable. It depends, of course, on the era they wrote in. I don't blame Austen and Alcott and Bronte for being constricted to the limits that were placed on females...but I'm not going to go out and read their books because of it. It's a personal choice, and it's just not up my alley. I'd rather read a book dealing with violence, race, insanity...but I'm just not interested in love and family stories.

Obviously you need to broaden your horizons. Start with Virginia Woolf who is an absolute master. Then try the likes of Flannery O'Connor, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore and Carson McCullers. Not all women writers are Bronte or Austen types, you know.

[PeterL]

To try to tackle SRB`s first point.

If you were given a piece of text to read, could you tell if the writer was male or female? I`d have to answer... Sometimes.

Certainly the above mentioned authors such as Austen or the Brontes leap off the page at you as feminine in style.

But what about George Eliot? The style as well as the nom de plume would pull the wool over the readers eyes.

Could Frankenstein have been written by a man? I think so.

Could the Palliser novels have been written by a woman? Maybe.

Perhaps style more than content is a clue to gender. But I`m not really sure. Interesting thread though.

It isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing. there are at least online things that will give an opinion of the sex of the writer of a piece of writing, and both are right most of the time.
http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
and
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html

[moose gurl]

Not too sure about this, the description of Austen's novels as being 'lovey dovey', yes they deal with love, but that does not mean they are all about love...Note, for example, Emma's reaction to the news that her friend wants to marry a farmer who she loves, and her failed attempt to 'match her up' with Mr. Elton-note also the unhappy marriages, despotic mothers and idiotic fathers and stupid recalcitrant sisters and men who populate Austen's novel.

I don't really know how the novels of the Bronte's could be construed as being 'lovey-dovey' (at least the ones I have read)-I mean Cathy and Heathcliffe and complete and utter nutcases! :D

Allow me to clarify: Perhaps because of my age, I am not usually interested in stories about marriage or stories about the dynamics of a family, unless that family is similar to Faulkner's families, but his stories are never JUST about family dynamics...I think the "lovey-dovey" threw you off. I find myself indifferent to Austen's characters because they possess little to which I personally can relate. Regardless of who wrote it and of which sex, I just feel that this subject, this genre of literature does not appeal to me.

And, once again Morten, you obviously have not read my post.

Oh, but I forgot about O'Connor. I loved Wise Blood and a few of her short stories. Very incredible.

[kelby_lake]

the sites are very interesting :)

[PeterL]

Could Frankenstein have been written by a man? I think so.



I just ran a few selections from Frankenstein through the analyzers, and your opinion held up. According to one analysis, the author was male, and another sample said female; and the findings varied between the two analyzers.

[NickAdams]

Obviously you need to broaden your horizons. Start with Virginia Woolf who is an absolute master. Then try the likes of Flannery O'Connor, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore and Carson McCullers. Not all women writers are Bronte or Austen types, you know.

These are all the females authors that I have on my reading list- minus Mcullers and Moore, but I'd like to know more about them. Thanks.

[Equilibrium]

I think the "lovey-dovey" threw you off. I find myself indifferent to Austen's characters because they possess little to which I personally can relate. Regardless of who wrote it and of which sex, I just feel that this subject, this genre of literature does not appeal to me.


Its funny, thats probably the very reason I like Austen etc. -- I'm phlegmatic, taciturn, anti-social, reclusive and I absolutely can't stand children or families (sound like a barrel of laughs don't I ;) ) so Austen's brand of characters who feel everything and define their world through social and family interaction is fresh and entertaining. Of course you can read in higher lessons and deeper meanings but thats just the icing on the cake.

I can appreciate what you're saying though, there are many areas of modern fiction that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole because they simply don't suit me, now matter how supposedly good they are.

[Petrarch's Love]

It isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing. there are at least online things that will give an opinion of the sex of the writer of a piece of writing, and both are right most of the time.

I don't think it's at all easy to guess the gender of a person simply by their writing style if there isn't some obvious tip off in the content of the piece. A friend of mine and I once tried reading some student papers without looking at the name and then guessing the gender, and it's actually much harder than it sounds. I could easily guess the approximate age of the student who wrote the paper, but not necessarily the gender. Incidently, I come out as strongly male on both those internet sites despite actually being strongly female. Maybe this makes me especially skeptical about the abilities of computers to guess such things. :p

[mortalterror]

Obviously you have not read Out of Africa. It does not read like Hemingway at all.

I enjoyed Out of Africa quite a bit. Thumbing through my copy just now, it reminded me again of certain aspects to be found in Hemingway's novels. Hemingway writes of the great white hunters, and Dinesen writes of herself as a great white plantation owner. Both of them have a touch of the exotic traveler about them, of foreigners who feel at home in their new environment, but with a unique outsider's distance which allows them to notice things the natives probably wouldn't. They both tend to idealize and simplify their black African employees. They both go hunting and have a deep enjoyment of the land. There is also a predilection for short declarative sentences in both writer's work. Look at their descriptions of landscape especially, the way they tend to make characters out of settings, and the way they place other things and people inside of or in relation to the landscapes.

[Erichtho]

It isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing. there are at least online things that will give an opinion of the sex of the writer of a piece of writing, and both are right most of the time.
http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
and
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html

I just copied an excerpt from a book, written by a female author and also translated by a woman and the result was on both sites strongly male. I really doubt that you or any other person can easily guess the gender of a writer.

[kelby_lake]

There are exceptions. It's not really about what gender the author is, but the gender they write in. For example a man might write in a very feminine style.

[Aiculík]

It isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing. there are at least online things that will give an opinion of the sex of the writer of a piece of writing, and both are right most of the time.
http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
and
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html

Well I just analysed the frst 515 words from Eveline, my favourite short strory from Dubliners.

The result from GenderGuesser
Genre: Formal (includes fiction and non-fiction stories, articles, and news reports)
Female = 809
Male = 442
Difference = -367; 35.33%
Verdict: FEMALE

The result from Gender Genie:
Female Score: 836
Male Score: 442
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

:) But to be fair - I tried several texts, and they got almost 50% right. Not too bad, but still not enough to prove that "it isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing"...


I think women authors concentrate somewhat more on interpersonal relationships. It's the interactions that define the main character(s). With male authors, character is more hermetically sealed, more of an independent entity. I think that's particularly noticeable in Balzac's Madame Bovary. There's something self-sustaining about Emma Bovary; she isn't defined by the characters around her. Or by circumstances, either. It's almost as if she's cut off, isolated.

You mean Flaubert's Madame Bovary. :)
Sorry, but what you say seems a lot like old prejudice tha women in general care more about interpersonal relationships than men... and I don't agree with that.
I was never able to finish any Austen's book so I have can't judge what are her characters like; but I don't quite agree with what you say about Emma. Yes, she's isolated, but not because she's "strong"... In my opinion, it's more because she's naive... yes, she's educated and intelligent, but she never had a chance to fully develop her potential. She's kind of "romantic" character living in a "realism" world. It's this conflict, between her ideals, world she's fantasizing about and the reality that is the main conflict in the novel. So her reactions to the reality - especially the final one - are very important to understand her... so, in a way, she is defined by circumstances and peple around her...
And anyway, I'm not that sure that it can be used as proof that there's some easily recognisable differece in women and men's style of writing...


Perhaps because I consider myself a female writer as well, I must admit I am typically disappointed when it comes to female authors. I didn't enjoy Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, or Lousia May Alcott. I have been timid of Virginia Woolf, because I'm afraid she'll disappoint me too.

But I'm not saying all females write differently from men. It's the subject matter of those women that turns me off more than their writing ability. I'm sure Austen can write like the best of them, but the lovey-dovey mushy stuff just isn't for me. I have the same problem with the Bronte sisters. The subject there is just--well, I would say "girly," but I don't really find that appropriate. It's just not for me.

On the other hand, I love Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar." I was initially tentative, since her poetry falls along the lines of emotional whimpering, but The Bell Jar was absolutely fantastic. I also really enjoyed Morrison, one of my favorite authors AND a female. I've heard Atwood is good and a tad Orwellian, which is bonus points in my book. So it's not so much female styled writing, but the subject matter SOME (most definitely not all) female authors choose.

Whether or not this is their own fault is, well, debatable. It depends, of course, on the era they wrote in. I don't blame Austen and Alcott and Bronte for being constricted to the limits that were placed on females...but I'm not going to go out and read their books because of it. It's a personal choice, and it's just not up my alley. I'd rather read a book dealing with violence, race, insanity...but I'm just not interested in love and family stories.

That's not a problem of gender... rather, it seems you don't like 19th century authors, but like those from 20th century. I definitely recommend you Atwood (I loved The Handmaid's Tale), or Arundhati Roy, or Laura Albert (the novel Sarah, I think she wrote it under some pen name)...
(Besides, there are also meny MEN who write love stories, as well, you know.)

[PeterL]

Well I just analysed the frst 515 words from Eveline, my favourite short strory from Dubliners.

The result from GenderGuesser
Genre: Formal (includes fiction and non-fiction stories, articles, and news reports)
Female = 809
Male = 442
Difference = -367; 35.33%
Verdict: FEMALE

The result from Gender Genie:
Female Score: 836
Male Score: 442
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

:) But to be fair - I tried several texts, and they got almost 50% right. Not too bad, but still not enough to prove that "it isn't difficult to tell most female and most male writers apart from their writing"...

It is interesting who and what it gets wrong. I have pasted a couple dozen pieces by various people in and the results were wrong in only four cases. There is more research to be done in the matter, but there is a tendency for writing by men and women to be different.

[Morten]

And, once again Morten, you obviously have not read my post.

.

Oh, please do elaborate. I'm just so excited to see what you conjure up.

[Aiculík]

It is interesting who and what it gets wrong. I have pasted a couple dozen pieces by various people in and the results were wrong in only four cases. There is more research to be done in the matter, but there is a tendency for writing by men and women to be different.

Well... perhaps. I tied ít some more yesterday, and I must say they often got it right... but, for example, when I tried my own short stories, the verdict was always male. Though it can be perhaps because I traslated it into English from other language? Who knows...

And with some authors, the Gender Guesser suggested that the autor is European, because of weak emphasis! It made me wonder if there is some special kind of emphasis in the USA, because the authors were either from Britain or Canada (e.g. Atwood or Martel).

It definitely is interesting... especially from translator's point of view... for example, if a book is written by woman, does it matter if it is translated by man? Should he first examine how much feminine the her style is and try to adjust his translation to it? Wouldn't it sound unnatural, if man tried to write like woman? And vice versa, of course...

[PeterL]

Well... perhaps. I tied ít some more yesterday, and I must say they often got it right... but, for example, when I tried my own short stories, the verdict was always male. Though it can be perhaps because I traslated it into English from other language? Who knows...

And with some authors, the Gender Guesser suggested that the autor is European, because of weak emphasis! It made me wonder if there is some special kind of emphasis in the USA, because the authors were either from Britain or Canada (e.g. Atwood or Martel).

It definitely is interesting... especially from translator's point of view... for example, if a book is written by woman, does it matter if it is translated by man? Should he first examine how much feminine the her style is and try to adjust his translation to it? Wouldn't it sound unnatural, if man tried to write like woman? And vice versa, of course...

I didn't try any translations, but the sex of the translator probably is significant.
There is a lot of variability in the results. I tried various things that I have written, and some of it came out as weak male or European. Then I pasted in a bunch of poetry, and it came out female.

[kelby_lake]

I typed in some dialogue from my play which is set in america and it came out as european and weak male.
When you paste extracts of the story, do you include dialogue?

[kandaurov]

The sites are very interesting! Don't forget one of the warnings displayed on the main page, though: "Lyrics, lists, poems, and prose are special writing styles. This tool is unlikely to classify these texts correctly."

I'm following the discussion with great interest, although I'm always skeptic about discussions concerning gender. It's hard enough speaking about male and female sex as it is, but when you deal with gender, that only recently discovered layer of social identity, all is so subjective and debatable that I doubt that a relatively definite answer can be found.

[PeterL]

I typed in some dialogue from my play which is set in america and it came out as european and weak male.
When you paste extracts of the story, do you include dialogue?

I have pasted all sorts of things, including dialogue, and I have gotten all sorts of results.


The sites are very interesting! Don't forget one of the warnings displayed on the main page, though: "Lyrics, lists, poems, and prose are special writing styles. This tool is unlikely to classify these texts correctly."

I took that as a general warning that the thing might not be accurate, because I don't think that there are any other significant kinds of writing. Epitaphs and inscriptions maybe, and technical writing, but technical writing is prose, and so are most other kinds of writing.


I'm following the discussion with great interest, although I'm always skeptic about discussions concerning gender. It's hard enough speaking about male and female sex as it is, but when you deal with gender, that only recently discovered layer of social identity, all is so subjective and debatable that I doubt that a relatively definite answer can be found.

"Gender" is actually an artificial thing invented by radical feminists in the 1970's. it has been experimentally demonstrated that there are no detectable culturally created differences between the sexes.

[kandaurov]

I took that as a general warning that the thing might not be accurate, because I don't think that there are any other significant kinds of writing. Epitaphs and inscriptions maybe, and technical writing, but technical writing is prose, and so are most other kinds of writing.

I think they are talking more about blogs, live journals, e-mails, maybe even conversation transcripts. Basically, texts that are more interpersonal and interactional than the likes of works of art or pure transmission of information.


"Gender" is actually an artificial thing invented by radical feminists in the 1970's. it has been experimentally demonstrated that there are no detectable culturally created differences between the sexes.

Well, now it's actually part of the language studies. Brian Paltridge (who is a man, which clears him a bit from suspicion) explains it quite nicely in the second chapter of the book "Discourse Analysis" (2006). If you could specify which studies prove gender to be nonexistent I would be happy to take a look at them and perhaps reconsider my view on the subject.

[Morten]

Hemingway is very testosterone driven, which is probably why I don't relate well to his stories and most of the men I know do. He's a good writer, of course, but I just don't like him. I don't think he creates women characters well, but his men are quite convincing.


I know where you're coming from, but I would be a little careful with this assessment. Hemingway's reputation for creating one-dimensional female characters, I think, is blown out of proportions and I think it is because people have a difficulty in distinguishing between his real-life macho persona and his artistic conscience. Hemingway's women aren't as bad as people make them out to be - particularly in the short stories. Though, obviously, he didn't write women as well as Scott Fitzgerald did.

[PeterL]

I think they are talking more about blogs, live journals, e-mails, maybe even conversation transcripts. Basically, texts that are more interpersonal and interactional than the likes of works of art or pure transmission of information.

Are they not prose?


Well, now it's actually part of the language studies. Brian Paltridge (who is a man, which clears him a bit from suspicion) explains it quite nicely in the second chapter of the book "Discourse Analysis" (2006). If you could specify which studies prove gender to be nonexistent I would be happy to take a look at them and perhaps reconsider my view on the subject.

If you are interested, then you should look into the matter. There are many references to such studies, but I haven't found any of the major articles. http://www.maricopa.edu/diversityinfusion/ARTICLES/PSY8.HTM
http://www.geocities.com/tkamalinejad/psychologypaper.html
http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html
There are many more. The third link is interesting.

A large part of the people who teach at the college level in the liberal arts were indoctrinated to believe that there were culturally imposed differences between the sexes. The "Cultural Studies" crowd have those culturally engendered differences at the heart of their dogma.

[kandaurov]

Are they not prose?

Not in the sense that they mean, I believe. In context one can see they actually mean novels, short stories and textes of the sort.


If you are interested, then you should look into the matter. There are many references to such studies, but I haven't found any of the major articles. http://www.maricopa.edu/diversityinfusion/ARTICLES/PSY8.HTM
http://www.geocities.com/tkamalinejad/psychologypaper.html
http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html
There are many more. The third link is interesting.

Will look them up, thanks.

[PeterL]

Not in the sense that they mean, I believe. In context one can see they actually mean novels, short stories and textes of the sort.

Using specialized definitions defeats the purpose of language.

[kandaurov]

Using specialized definitions defeats the purpose of language.

Now that's just nitpicking. Let's try to stick to the thread.

I've read bits of the websites you gave me. I admit that the professor that introduced me to the concept of genre might have been biased, and I've never really liked feminist criticism in literature, so I'll review my stance on the gender matter with a more critical eye.

[mortalterror]

I don't think Hemingway's female characters are one-dimensional. I do think they're better than that, but they're clearly inferior to his male characters. And yes, they are more fully drawn in the short stores, but still, it's usually the men who do all the talking and the decision making, like in "Hills Like White Elephants." The woman is very passive, while the man seems to know exactly what he wants.

Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls is a towering figure of strength, and with more nuanced layers to her character than an onion has. She's the best character in the book, and is much more memorable than even the protagonist Robert Jordan. I'm glad you mentioned Hills Like White Elephants, because I never saw that story as the guy imposing his will on the girl. I think that the woman in the story is not submissive. She's aggressive, passive aggressive. Both parties are engaging in a contest of wills to make the other person speak up for abortion, and absolve themselves of the guilt and responsibility. Neither one of them wants the baby, but neither do they want the blame of not wanting the baby; so they circle round and round each other talking in metaphors. Both of the characters fail to speak openly about their real desires, and that failure of honesty is why they cannot have a baby together, and why their relationship is ultimately doomed.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Some male novelists-Tolstoi and Flaubert, for example, wrote masterpieces in which the protaganist was female. Some men are not as good in depicting women-the otherwise excellent Paul Auster has very one-dimensional women in his novels-they all tend to be beautiful, lusty and...that pretty much sums them up. Looking at Auster's picture, I can appreciate that he must have been a pretty sexy guy and, for a while at least, lived in a perpetual state of sex, but almost every Tom, Dick and Harry in Auster's novels tends to live in a world of 'perpetual sex with random beautiful woman'-the mentally deficient, the mentally munificent, alcoholic biographers of Chateaubriand, silent movie stars, old perverts, private detectives etc. etc.-you could flick a bogey in Auster's novels and a woman would want to take off your clothes!


Should he first examine how much feminine the her style is and try to adjust his translation to it? Wouldn't it sound unnatural, if man tried to write like woman? And vice versa, of course...

Interestingly enough, one of the first English translators of the Russian masters (Tolsoti, Dostoevskii and I think Turgenev) was a woman-the recent team translation of In Search of Lost Time includes women, and although it may or may not be more "true" to Proust than Moncrieff's version, it is a lot less muscular and sensuous in my opinion, Edwin Muir's wife helped him translate Kafka-I am not sure as to whether there is a specific 'feminine' style, unless you are talking about 'extreme' cases, such as (say) Austen and Hemingway. The 'differences' may be more about differences between the languages rather than gender differences.


On Morton and moose girl-are you two romantically acquainted or something? Sure sounds like it....:p

[PeterL]

I've read bits of the websites you gave me. I admit that the professor that introduced me to the concept of genre might have been biased, and I've never really liked feminist criticism in literature, so I'll review my stance on the gender matter with a more critical eye.

I don't think much of feminist literary criticism either, but there are differences between the sexes, and those differences are reflected in styles of communication. Until I saw those sites, I hadn't realized that anyone had tried to quantify the differences.

[Dori]

Listening to a lecture on the History of the English language (from the Teaching Company), I learned that Otto Jesperson, a Danish linguist, wrote a book called The Growth and Structure of the English Language, wherein he wrote:


"...at any rate, our assertion is corroborated by the fact observed by every student of languages, that novels written by ladies are much easier to read and contain much fewer difficult words than those written by men. All of this seems to justify us in setting down the enormous richness of the English vocabulary to the same masculinity of the English nation, which we have now encountered in so many various fields." (1905)

He also argued that men tend to prove superior in the test of translating and that the English language was superior to others because "English dictionaries comprise a larger number of words than those of any other nation, and they present a variegated picture of terms from the four corners of the globe."

Interesting...;)